I know the Water God will strike me ~ however here goes "I find water a bit bland"....oopsssssssssssssssss.....except on stinking hot days...mind you I'm not writing of the oceans/bays/inlets/shorelines/rivers etc...that's a different water if you know what I mean..

a little lemon juice to give it a kick along.....anything really...so I'll quietly await my punishment from the god...once when my children were drinking water very quickly I told them to slow down because they could drown...the thing is I believed it ...I believe there is such a thing as too much water...some medical thing...

champagne/iced chocolate/or that thick hot chocolate that one would kill for....yep ma choices of liquid..

however I do respect water_________________"I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us." - James Gleeson

I have gotten to the age where I ignore comments from people criticizing personal habits of mine that DON'T affect them.

So, it is with MY obsession with water, which has to be second behind Erin's. I. LOVE. WATER. and always have! When I was working in an office during my college days, one nosy woman, noticing the water glass on my desk kept asking me, "Are you diabetic?" and then she'd launch into all the warning signs. "Do you have a kidney disease?" and then I'd hear about that, too! Now, this was decades before the bottled water phenominon came about, where no one thinks anything of seeing someone down a bottle of water. But, I drink 1-2 quarts on a normal day, 4-6 on a heavy landscaping day.

Sidenote: when I went to a palm reader at a RenFair, she said, "You must always have water around you, dear. You must never live further than 5 miles from fresh water and you must always have water within reaching distance." And she was right! I've either lived on Lake Superior, the Mississippi River or Lake Michigan, and never more than a mile away...ever!

I've been blessed. Both Minneapolis' and Chicago's water are almost flawless; in test after test, Chicago is continually ranked as one of the BEST tap waters in the nation. So, no filter, no worries....it's always, always good and icy cold.

In Michigan, I have a well that pulls off of an aquifer from Lake Michigan: I should bottle that water and make a fortune.

If I'm forced to buy water because I've gone through the Mother Lode stored in my truck, it's ONLY Dasani. I've tried them ALL: Poland Springs, Bleu, Evian and Dasani has the best mineral taste, to my taste buds.

So, I say, "Bring on the water"! I'll be there with my tin cup to drink it in.

P.S. Erin: I loved the little girl in SIGNS! "This one has amebas in it! This one has a hair".

Hey, Rainey would you please explain to me about how chlorine affects yeast? I've never heard about this before. I use a Pur filter in my kitchen to filter all my at-home drinking water AND for cooking. Some people think I'm way too picky about our water, but I'm just a little paranoid. If we've had heavy rains, when I fill my bath tub full, the water has a copper stain to it. It comes from our local Clackamas River. I drink as much as I can, partly because I've had kidney stones and don't want to ever experience that again. So I carry 24 packs of bottled water around in my car, so that I can drink whenever I'm driving out and about. I usually buy Arrowhead and I've been teased by more than one friend about all the water bottles in my car.

cynthia- You're asking for more chemistry than I know (having dropped out of high school chemistry after about 10 days...). And not all bread bakers follow this rule. But, in my opinion, it's a very cheap and simple form of insurance so I keep bottles of non-chlorinated water on hand for my bread.

The theory is that chlorine is added to water to knock out any noxious little beasties. Yeasts are, themselves, beasties -- tho, of course, they're far from noxious and absolutely essential to bread dough. So, not using cholorinated water seems like a very good idea.

Some municipal water is not chlorinated. No spring water is chlorinated. I don't think there's any bottled water that's chlorinated. And, excellent news, municipal water that is chlorinated, loses it's chlorination when it sits in an open container for 24 hours. This is a useful fact to know for pet fish as well as the yeast in bread dough. But check the specs on your Pur filter. I don't believe filtering removes chlorine.

I love the sound of Clakamas! The Northwest has soooo many interesting sounding names!

I'm sorry to hear that you had kidney stones. My husband once had them so I know why you don't want that experience again...

madameshawshank-you are quite right about there being such a thing as too much water consumption. When water is excreted by the kidneys it always takes some sodium along with it. This leads to hyponatremia, too little sodium in the body and sodium is essential for proper body functioning. It has become a problem for some people during marathon runs when people drink far too much water than they need even under these circumstances (sodium is also released in sweat) and some deaths have occurred during marathons that eventually have been attributed to huponatremia. So the lesson of course, is , walk don't run!

cynthia----------kidney stones --------ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww----twice I've had them, twice I thought I'd rather die. As for whether it is more painful than childbirth---------since I'm unlikely ever to experience it I can't judge----but at least in childbirth you normally end up with something worthwhile!_________________Vivant Linguae Mortuae!!

kidney stones...David a friend of mine says one should go INTO the pain..don't avoid it....so, my Canadian pal...give those stones another go and see how you go...remember INTO THE PAIN

only joking David only joking

With a tooth ache beyond words I tried the technique .. and it didn't work!

never ever would I wish ye pain..._________________"I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us." - James Gleeson

...worked for me in labor. I wouldn't say it made the experience anything to look forward to, but it did make it less painful, less anxious and more productive. I had about 10 hours of painful, unproductive labor prior to figuring that out and only another hour or so after I gave in to it.

I can still see, in my mind, the images of waves breaking that got my orientation to labor contractions turned around.

Rainey Darling...you can be the cnz life coach! can remember, after the birth of our son ~ all ten and a half pounds of him! the doc saying "You have a high tolerance for pain!

As a child I didn't get on with our dentist...she spooked me out holding that massive needle in front of my blue eyes!...the surgery was within cooee of Bondi Beach...can recall sitting in the chair thinking "Now if I could only BE on the beach ~ I wouldn't BE here"...it sort of worked.._________________"I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us." - James Gleeson